Your Habit Loop
If any of what I’m going to mention interests you go ahead and pick up Charles Duhigg’s “Power of Habit”. It’s a great book dense with content and genuinely eye opening content.
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I’d like you (yes you) to take a second and look back at your morning. Did you snooze your alarm three times? Did you check your e-mail right away? Did you go straight to the bathroom? Did you even think about what you were doing?
See a lot of what we do each day feels automatic. We barely even think about it. It’s almost as if it was our subconscious controlling our decisions.
That’s because our brains develop habits, as simple as checking our phone each morning, pressing the right elevator button, or going out for a jog each morning.
Our lives can be broken down into a series of habits. This natural skill dating back thousands of years has helped our brain conserve energy and react quickly to any dangers.
Today it can help or hinder us.
Understanding your habit loop will help reinforce it, change it, or get rid of it all together.
But first we must understand the way habits work.
To help us better understand, let’s take a look at a negative habit of mine.
Every night before I sleep I used to get in bed, turn on my laptop, and begin to watch multiple TV shows. I’d binge watch for an hour or so, grab a bite to eat, brush my teeth, and go to bed.
Every night for a month I was repeating this routine and it was cutting into my sleep time.
My cue was bed time arriving.
My routine was to watch TV shows.
My reward was to grab a bite, brush my teeth, and sleep.
From reading “The Power of Habit” I understood that the best way to change a habit is to change the routine but keep the cue and reward.
I wanted to add more reading to my days and figured that just before going to sleep would be a great opportunity.
The next night, I set my computer aside and picked up a book. I found that I could control how much I read a lot better than watching a show. Once I was satisfied with the amount I’d read, I grabbed a bite, brushed my teeth, and headed to bed.
I repeated this for 2 weeks and at this point I can safely say it’s become a habit.
Your life is filled with these types of examples and when equip with the knowledge regarding habits you can make the changes you want to make in your life.
There isn’t a single game changing trick that’s going to make you efficient.
There isn’t a single article or book that’s going to change your life.
There are many tricks and skill we can develop to help us reach our goals.
I urge you to look into your habits it has had a significant effect on my life and I’m confident it can with yours!
Start small, change a single thing and the rest will fall into place.
Good luck!
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Don’t forget to check out “The Power of Habit” if you’re interested in learning more!
